Keeping the Promise: Frontline Voices on the Scale of the Challenge
SASW, March 2026Teams across Scotland are committed to keeping the Promise, but despite their dedication and effort, the scale of the challenge will entail a significant step-change in resource allocation and provision for communities and their services from the Scottish Government during the next Parliament.
Introduction
SASW supports the aims of The Promise, that every child in Scotland feels loved, safe and respected. We believe in the need for significant change in the care system such that children and young people who care experienced have the security, safety and resources needed to live fulfilled, meaningful lives.
While we support the aims of the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill, legislative change without an associated increase in resources will not achieve the aims of The Promise. This paper reflects our members’ experience in frontline practice with children and their families and highlights their aspirations, and their concerns about the current landscape.
What Our Members Are Telling Us
Social workers across Scotland are working hard to keep the Promise. Our members have redesigned how they chair children’s reviews, adopted trauma-informed language in their recording, and built their practice around the knowledge and experience of people who have lived through state intervention. When the conditions are right, this work is deeply motivating:
“It feels good when I can do my job well. It gives me a sense of achievement and pride in my practice when I’ve been able to help.”
But the reality on the ground is that the resources and infrastructure needed to sustain this work are not in place. Our members describe a system under severe pressure:
“The biggest challenges [are] austerity and budget cuts to services such as our carers team that is dismantled, cuts to SDS and local authorities receiving less money from the government.”
There is a national shortage of foster placements and accommodation for young people. When the decision is made to keep a child safe, social workers cannot always find somewhere for that child to go. Specialist services for children with disabilities are increasingly difficult to access, with third sector partners themselves unable to recruit. Caseloads are too high and growing in complexity, pushing practitioners into crisis work rather than the early intervention the Promise demands. Newly qualified social workers are entering statutory services poorly prepared by limited placement opportunities, making early burnout more likely.
Our members also describe organisational cultures that work against the relational practice the Promise calls for:
“Administrative systems that try and dominate and interfere with finding creative consensual ways forward.”
The workforce consequences are stark. Children and young people deserve consistency in the professionals who support them, but current conditions make this impossible:
“We cannot retain social workers in children’s services because the working conditions are so challenging. This means that children and young people have new social workers often which is unfair to our looked after children and young people but also to social workers trying their best.”
We know that consistent, supportive relationships with professionals can make a huge difference to care experienced children, however current working conditions undermine long term relationship-based practice.
The emotional toll is real. Our members describe what this feels like in practice:
“It’s deflating most days when I can’t do my job effectively. It creates anxiety and enormous stress for me personally.”
“Morale is poor amongst the workforce and many social workers have had enough.”
“Angry and frustrated.”
These are not the words of disengaged professionals. They are the words of social workers who care deeply about the children and families they work with and who are reaching the limits of what can be achieved under current conditions.
Our View
The picture our members describe is consistent and clear. The problems facing children’s services in Scotland are fundamentally rooted in resource. Foster placements, accommodation, specialist services, workforce capacity, caseload levels: these are not problems that can be solved through legislative reform alone they require investment.
There may be a place for legislation where genuine gaps in legal frameworks are identified, but the bar for new legislation should be set very high. Before any legislative proposal is brought forward, a straightforward test should be applied: is there an existing legislative framework that would solve this problem, and if so, why is it not working? If the answer is rooted in lack of resource, the answer is not more law. It is more funding, more staffing, and more capacity in the services that children, young people and families depend on.
Our members are already asking this question:
“We need an honest conversation about what needs to change in children’s services and how we can achieve this for all. This includes the government being honest about financial resources available for reform.”
The next Scottish Parliament must match the ambition of the Promise with the resources to deliver it. Without a significant step-change in resource allocation and provision, even the most dedicated workforce cannot deliver the transformation that children and families deserve. The Promise will remain just that: a promise.
